Quebecois music rulz! S/D

D: Kevin Parent

that's one of the coolest things about Quebec culture. Whereas the rest of Canada enjoys what can most charitably be called a cultural symbiosis with USA, Quebec has had no choice but to develop on their own. France is too different, so are all the other places around the world where French is widespread.

Les Secretaire Volantes
Villain Penguin
Les Colocs

Daniel Belanger
Gilles Vigneault
La Bottine Souriante
Diane Dufresne

What would you call English music from Quebec? It couldn't be called Quebecois I don't think...

I would, but I'm just a silly anglophone Acadian so Im slightly biased. :)

There's a certain francophone element to BV3K. I think several members were franco, certainly the whole "Hell-ay" chant comes from the Quebeccent. Also, wasn't the first album recorded with money left over from the provincial funding JAMES (I'm sure it's James) got to make a Jean Leloup video? So, like, they count.

Also, they're franco, but they don't sing in French (that I've heard), but S: the Chains. Very good contemporary garage pop (on Get Hip).

I can't see the page, but maybe it will help?

http://www.multimania.com/ginsonic

Also, I wish I had thumbs enough to put up in praise of Conventum, Wondeur Brass, Harmonium, Opus 5, Pollen and, more recently, Jorane.

Actually, Gainsbourg wrote it for her!

S/ Mucho Gusto records... amazing Montreal-based reissue label focusing on lost psych, new music and weirdo gems. Specifically check:
-Peloquin/Sauvageau "Laissez-nous vous embrasser où vous avez mal"
-"Total Freakout" 1, 2, and 3. Late 60s/early 70s French, Belgian, and Quebecois psych and freakout comps. You can't lose.
-the two reissues of L'Infonie.
-Les Maledictus Sound

Oh wait... that's everything they've released!

Let me see if I can get this awesome quebec disco mix up for download...

It's weird and disappointing how so much of the francophone music doesn't make it over to anglophone communities. You end up finding music that's made in Canada if you happen to look in the "International" section. I guess it's better than it could be.

I forgot to mention Maneige! They were a great band.

Sloche is another great moment of QC psych/prog, especially "C'pas fin du monde" from J'un Oeil if you can find it. I think they did two records in the mid-70s.

Formed in Montreal in 1967, L‘INFONIE existed officially until 1974. Seven years of pure mayem that gave birth to four vinyls (volume 3, volume33, volume 333 and volume 3333) as well as various multidisciplinary shows built as way-out happenings with costumes etc...

Lead by composer WALTER BOUDREAU (aka retlaW uaerduoB) and poet, singer, trumpeter RAÔUL DUGUAY (aka luôaR yauguD) this very loose collective regrouped up to 33 artists from various backgrounds ranging from free jazz, classical, contemporary, rock, visual arts and poetry in one avant-garde adventure still unsurpassed in Québec.

God damn, do I ever wish I could see this Wayne + Shuster song again where Johnny Wayne is singing about hitting on a woman in Chicoutimi (where her (her boyfriend) "got through to me / in language that was blue to me / four-letter words quite new to me"). His delivery just ruled.

artist/album/song

Franck Dervieux/Dimension M/Dimension M
Contraction/Contraction/Trois ou Quatre
Luc & Lise Cousineau/Laisse un Temps a l'Amour/Quebec Nucleaire
1001 est cremazie/st/le Roi Mouffe

In the wake of the CanCon poll, I've been revisiting some Québécois albums of old, starting with Daniel Bélanger's Rêver mieux: wistful, folksy trip-hop that, in my infinite edginess, I remember finding too 'adult' back in 2001. Lo and behold, having reached said age in the interim, I've surrendered to the prettiness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekieVUVZUek

rêver mieux is all-time

Tu ne demandais qu'une épaule
Pour t'appuyer dans mon lit
Dans tes bleus
Moi c'était facile dans ma tête
Je pouvais dormir et peut-être
Rêver mieux

Yeah, the lyrics strike just the right balance between emotional directness and mild surrealism. In some ways, they bring to mind Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau.

Speaking of Bélanger, is there a more beautiful song than Sèche tes pleurs?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfhnSsm2V7E

<3

I'd never actually heard Les Cowboys Fringants until my parents sent me this video and now I'm embarrassed to say my folks just got me into a band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYRp8oP0yiw

I think I submitted a one- or two-song tracks ballot last year just to vote for that song.

It’s a great song.

yeah, one of those chills-down-the-spine songs that grabs you immediately. video's great, too. I've been checking out the back catalog, enjoyable but nothing else hitting me on that level just yet

can confirm 'mille neuf cent quatre vingt dix' being the hottest québecois dancefloor hit of summer 1991

just behind crystal waters' 'gypsy woman (she's homeless)' iirc

I confirm too !

Claude Dubois is a singer/songwriter who's been putting out albums almost every year or two since the mid sixties. Everybody in Québec knows him. He's had many radio hits over the years. I would say search "Le Blues du businessman", which he sings the definitive version of.
(x-post)

In the Franco-Ontarian realm the prog group CANO (Coopérative des artistes du Nouvel-Ontario) from Sudbury played trad shit and (naturally) prog rock back in the 60/70/80s, they were associated with the Laurentian students that were part of C'est l'temps and its alleged links with the FLQ. Tous Dans L'Meme Bateau is a great album.

enjoying this album this morning, thanks for the recommendation

― himpathy with the devil (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, March 10, 2021 3:19 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Been listening to a lot more of the CANO-related shit lately. I recommend the second CANO album as well, after that when Andre Paiement cancer/suicide occurred the music went downhill without him I think. Folks love Eclipse though. His sister Rachel was in CANO as well of course but she left post-Eclipse and left Sudbury/Sturgeon Falls altogether.

Robert Paquette's first two albums are very much in the same realm as CANO, a little more singer-songwriter-y. He was a Sudburian who played in CANO at times.

Marcel Aymar and Paul Demers were also part of this scene. I haven't listened to Aymar's individual stuff at all but he was an Acadian and from wikipedia his modern individual stuff is fairly Cajun in sound.

Paul Demers' first solo album in 1990 is pretty good, it has the official Franco-Ontarian anthem Notre Place on it. My six year old came home from his school obsessed with this song the other day so its been playing in our house a lot lately.

Paquette/Aymar/Demers also performed as a group in the 80s/90s-ish time period, called sometimes PAD or Purlaine, but I've not been able to find any of their stuff to listen to yet. Alain Grouette who ran the theatre in Sturgeon Falls in the 70s/80s was a sometimes collaborator who self-released at least 1 album from what I can tell. A lot of these folks are related to the theatre in Sudbury as well and took part in starting the La Nuit sur l'étang with Fernand Dorais.

toronto alone has alot better music!

take it to the Drake thread

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URkrWYt2Swg

I'm enjoying Tu ne mourras pas by Maude Audet this morning: https://chansonsdemaude.bandcamp.com/album/tu-ne-mourras-pas

Not groundbreaking, but pretty & dreamy 70s-ish folk with elegant arrangements.

Just discovering Avec Pas d'Casque and enjoying them a lot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2AmnADMu-U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDUG38_GQfE

The Robert Charlebois/Louise Forestier record (with the brown and yellow geometric cover) is pretty hot too

Forestier's second and third albums, another self-titled from 1969 and Avec Enzymes from 1970 are worth checking out if the idea of psychedelic chanson appeals.

Anyway, this thread needs Deja Voodoo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaFyQmOrMSk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTi4NPUAW5A

Also search out Marie-Pierre Arthur. Her second album, Aux alentours is worth your time. https://mariepierrearthur.bandcamp.com/album/aux-alentours

I guess the death of Harmonium's Serge Fiori could have been mentioned here. I listened to samples of his 2014 solo album and it seems like it is worth checking out.

ahhh god i love avec pas d'casque

Into Fine Fresh Market these days, kind of the middle between Men I Trust and Edith Frost:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkr4eQfoyEE

Whoops, Fine Food Market -- I keep saying Farm Fresh Market, etc etc

this is nice! country-dream-pop

The whole EP is more of it, in English and French.

yep had it on today while making lunch, really nice stuff! will have to listen more closely again soon

been loving Angine De Poitrine recently - daft costumes, quarter tone guitars, super tight live act

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IrODUjl70U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfDtfz7vXkY

Nice!!

I just saw Lou-Adriane Cassidy in concert last week. She was incredible. Beautiful voice, amazing stage presence, awesome band, and cool light show.

She released two great albums last year and won song of the year at L'ADISQ with "Dis moi dis moi dis moi". I should've nominated it for the year end poll.

you know, I've seen that cover image all over town without catching the album title. real ah-ha moment this morning

while this thread is active, it's worth noting Tim F's ambassadorial efforts to promote Montreal artists:

Thread for the album of 2025 which as of March is Moon Apple’s “Four Pillars”

Ouri - Daisy Cutter

Thread for Maara’s 2026 album ‘Ultra Villain’

huh, I was a fan of the previous Maara album, didn't realize they were from Montreal

Anyway, I really liked this from the ILM tracks nominations and it looks like there's an album coming out this year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip7dwQ2rphA

Was gonna mention Bibi Club. Really enjoying them lately. She is actually Michel Rivard (of Beau Dommage and solo fame)'s daughter.

Love Bibi Club!

And agreed, Lou-Adriane's "Dit-moi" was one of the best tracks of 2025, flat-out. The album is superb, too, and it's really nice to see Quebec pop have a real moment like it's enjoying right now. Lou's bff Ariane Roy's album Dogue is even better, in my opinion. Incredible, magnetic performer who deserves some international attention.

That said, Lou's rather outspoken separatist opinions make me squeamish. Aside from being wildly misguided (Quebec is a FABULOUS little nation, and are in no way oppressed by the nation-state it's part of) she's really boxing herself into a corner by alienating anyone who doesn't speak Quebecois. Which means zero chance at the kind of crossover success Coeur de Pirate and Charlotte Cardin enjoyed in anglo Canada when they were rising stars.

Carl Wilson of Slate says- "It feels like the only thing the music internet has been talking about the past week is Montreal’s anonyme duo Angine de Poitrine, w/ their dadaesque polka-dotted masks & costumes & their heady brew of outsider art & microtonal math rock."

Today is the first time I have seen them mentioned. I'm losing my edge.

I posted about them in this very thread a couple of weeks ago!
read somewhere that they've been playing together since they were kids which explains their tightness
I guess all the pyramid imagery comes from the Ha! Ha! Pyramid in Saguenay? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha!_Ha!_Pyramid

You are way ahead of everyone regarding them!

After I read the Carl Wilson thing in his substack I searched the band's name on Bluesky and then here on ILM where I saw your post from earlier.

obv much proggier but i feel like i hear/see some les georges leningrad/duchess says/aids wolf influence. i wonder if they have ever heard those bands or if it's just a coincidence slash a latent circus-ey influence the ether

they are definitely inheritors of the same scene as les georges!

has it been documented?

hmm, i've been doing some googling and i think i was overconfident... They're from Saguenay, not Montreal, and i can't find any documented links. all i can say is LGL were definitely famous enough here that their influence would be felt? i dunno if you agree.

i reckon i learned about LGL through reading mirror/vice/exclaim in the mid 00s, when i was in high school. saw them live maybe 2007 at zoobizarre? can't remember

someone needs to interview angine ask them if they've heard em. maybe slip them a copy of deux hotdog moutarde chou nardwuar style

Can confirm: had not heard of this band yesterday, last night showed up in my algorithm, was immediately obsessed, sent it to like 5 friends today who were all like "I've been obsessed with this all week!"

Can also confirm: THIS IS EXTREMELY MY SHIT

lol apparently everyone got the same memo at once

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ssi-9wS1so

"This is the Future we were Primused"

You are way ahead of everyone regarding them!

I don't know, they blew up in my feeds two weeks ago. Whiney loves them, I believe.

someone needs to interview angine ask them if they've heard em. maybe slip them a copy of deux hotdog moutarde chou nardwuar style

― flopson, Monday, February 23, 2026 9:46 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

have you...heard their interviews? if anyone hasn't, you're in for a treat

i've been listening to this band for a few months and didn't think they'd suddenly explode (after their KEXP performance hit over one million views)

fun music and something different

"This is the Future we were Primused"

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, February 24, 2026 2:17 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

of all comparisons, the primus one is the one i do not agree with. the biggest difference to my ears is that angine de poitrine is noticeably microtonal, whereas primus sometimes goes into dissonant territory. their vibes are different!

Tbf Les Georges (despite being the cream of the crop of their genre, love them forever) did seem to me to be a distillation of a sheaf of Quebec-intrinsic notions and aesthetics— ambassadors of the Zoobizarre sound rather than outliers

xp- so do they know les georges leningrad ?

there is that "garbled" up speech connection, right? i'm sure they've at least heard their music

do they know uzeb?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnCcv-LhIxc jazz is oké

https://feedingtuberecords.bandcamp.com/album/delusions

very excited for this reissue

that uzeb set is sick lol

Angine de Poitrine Vol 2 out April 3rd
https://anginedepoitrine.bandcamp.com/album/vol-ii